Since joining the US Senate, former Florida Governor Rick Scott has tried to pass himself off as a DC outsider and non-pol with new ideas and a refreshing lack of allegiance to party orthodoxy. It’s bullshit of a particularly pungent variety that will be familiar to anyone who has followed his career.
Scott won the governorship during the country’s Astroturf tea party era using a similar ruse, casting himself as a businessman with fresh ideas. He was and remains a thoroughly corrupt fraudster who regards the $150 million-plus of his personal fortune he spent on his campaigns as an investment that will pay off when he redirects the flow of government contracts toward his businesses.
In other words, Scott is just as corrupt and craven as every other Republican politician, just wealthier than most. In yesterday’s Post, opinions editor James Downie identified how Scott is a chickenshit on gun control, just like a common Republican:
Appearing on the Sunday talk shows a day after another mass shooting left seven dead in Midland and Odessa, Tex., would Scott tout the bill he signed as an example to fellow Republicans that the NRA need not be feared? No. Instead, he was too scared of the NRA to even talk about much of the law that he himself signed…
Scott described “what we did in Florida” in similar terms on CNN’s “State of the Union,” as well as in an August op-ed for The Post: “The steps we took in Florida, in addition to committing $400 million to increasing school safety, included a ‘red flag’ provision.”
You might be thinking at this point, “That’s doesn’t sound like all that much.” But Scott himself left out many of the key changes the law made. It also banned bump stocks (which increase the rate of fire for semiautomatic weapons), implemented a three-day waiting period for firearm sales and raised the minimum age to purchase a rifle from 18 to 21. The latter change was significant enough that the NRA is suing over it, yet somehow it managed to slip Scott’s memory.
The truth is that after Parkland, then-Governor Scott and the Republican-majority statehouse would have been happy to do the NRA’s bidding as usual and sweep the latest massacre under the rug with “thoughts and prayers.” They’d done so after the Pulse nightclub massacre, which at the time was the single deadliest shooting spree in US history.
The difference in Florida was the Parkland survivors. They wouldn’t let the news cycle move on, and they were savvy enough to tie their protests to voter registration drives and political action.
Thanks to their efforts, for the first time in decades, Republican lawmakers in Florida feared backlash from disgusted citizens more than the NRA and gun nuts. That’s why meaningful gun safety laws were passed in the GOP-controlled legislature and signed by Scott.
Trump and the Republicans in Congress are right where Scott and the FL statehouse were when Emma González gave her “We Call BS” speech. They’re hoping media attention from this latest spate of massacres blows over so they won’t be pressured to restrict access to guns in any meaningful way. Scott is part of that effort, which is why he’s omitting key details about what happened in Florida.
The guns are the problem, but Republicans will do anything to avoid taking the obvious steps the rest of the developed world has taken to stop the carnage we Americans routinely endure. But why is this still the case, when the NRA is in a weakened state and public sentiment is clearly shifting?
Yesterday in comments, Kay highlighted one possible motive for this hysterical paralysis: If gun nuts belatedly admit that guns are the problem, that’s tantamount to admitting they were wrong to insist on unfettered access to firearms for decades and that people died as a result of that mistake. She described it as a “sunk cost” situation.
I think that’s true, and because it is, nothing will budge rank and file gun nuts from their reflexive defensiveness on guns. Their own part in enabling the massacres is simply too horrifying to admit the possibility.
But Republican politicians can be moved, as the actions on which Scott developed selective amnesia demonstrate. The Parkland survivors made Florida Republicans more fearful of backlash from voters than they were of the NRA. Nothing will change at the federal level until we replicate that on a national scale. I believe we will.
feebog
I’m liking Beto O’Rourke’s approach, yes, we are going to take your semi automatic rifles and ban them from being sold. Deal with it.
germy
germy
SiubhanDuinne
They will do anything rather than relax their stance on easy access to guns.
For instance.
tokyokie
We need to make ammosexuality just as toxic as MADD has done with DWI.
germy
@tokyokie:
And I remember when everyone was cool with cigarettes everywhere. Smoke, ashtrays, cigarette butts everywhere.
debbie
@SiubhanDuinne:
How pathetic is Bob Barr? Like this will have the slightest bit of deterrence.
Kattails
Somewhat OT but looked at the @sunrainsunrain twitter feed Cole mentioned (not the feed she was commenting on). I scrolled down a little way just to kill more rainy day time and found a link to a culinary masterpiece, @drinksmcgee August 30. Don’t know how to link, but it’s pretty funny, in a sick kind of way.
J R in WV
@germy:
Yes, this! I was SO glad when here locally the issues was turned over to local health departments, which pretty quickly forced no-smoking areas on public businesses, and shut down smoking in office spaces. They then decided that the no-smoking areas weren’t doing the job and decided if you needed to smoke that badly, you should just go away to do it.
When we drove west to AZ and headed straight west into Missouri, we were shocked when we went into a giant nearly empty nice restaurant in mid-afternoon, sat down to order a late lunch, and instantly a guy came in, sat down beside us, in spite of the 90 empty tables he could have sat at, and immediately fired up a cigarette. Revolting.
We fled MO fastest! The hotels were bad also too, obviously all the rooms were smoked up regularly. But it’s a pretty big state, so we couldn’t flash travel and be in a less toxic state instantly, like Dr WHO’s tardis… Pretty, but all that smoke was revolting to non-smokers like us. Won’t be back.
MattF
@germy: Drinking too much ‘coffee’ can have unfortunate consequences. You need to remember to check, when you shoot, that Bambi isn’t wearing one of those bright orange vests…
Bill Arnold
I struggle to understand DJT sometimes. Timeline of Trump on existence of Cat 5 hurricanes.
Re Alabama, a few more possibilities; (1) perhaps he’s worried about big hurricanes hitting red states (2) perhaps he thought that Alabama had an east coast coastline. (Like New Hampshire.)
Sebastian
The NRA did us a service with their politician rating. All 100% members have to wear it as the mark of the Beast.
Mandalay
@feebog:
Me too. No waffling or fence sitting:
And to the rest of the Democratic contenders/pretenders: How hard was that, and where do YOU stand after the latest massacre?
I’m sure the punditocracy will explain to us why O’Rourke is going down a reckless and dangerous path, but they would have wagged their fingers at MLK and Queer Nation as well.
germy
@J R in WV:
I wonder if that was a deliberate attempt to be offensive.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@SiubhanDuinne:
Good luck getting that past the House, ghoul
tokyokie
@germy:
I remember going to movie theaters and people would light up, then toss their butts on the floor when finished. When I started in the newspaper biz, half my colleagues were smokers and would fill up an ashtray on their desks during the evening. But by the time I was laid off, smokers weren’t even allowed to smoke in the building.
germy
germy
@tokyokie: I remember being on a flight to Canada back in the mid-1980s. There was a smoking “section” on the plane. Of course the smoke wafted everywhere.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@J R in WV:
I remember in Ohio they used to have “non-smoking sections” in restaurants. They never worked and the smoke would drift over dividing walls and around corners. It made eating out disgusting and unpleasant. I’m so glad Ohio banned public smoking
zhena gogolia
@germy:
I was watching Frank Zappa’s testimony to Congress about labeling music lyrics in the 1970s, and the most impressive thing about it to me was the the guy sitting next to Al Gore was smoking a big-ass pipe and spewing smoke all over the committee room.
germy
trollhattan
@germy:
Yesterday, Greg Abbott took pains to note not every mass killing is done with “sporting rifles.” Thanks governor, very insightful. I wonder what Stephen Paddock could have done with a roomful of shotguns up there on the 32nd Floor? Knives? Revolvers? Nunchucks?
The guns literally are the problem.
germy
tokyokie
@Bill Arnold: I doubt that Trump knows that New Hampshire has a coastline on the Atlantic, just as I doubt he could name more than 5 of the 17 states that are on the Atlantic (including the Gulf of Mexico).
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@debbie:
It absolutely will not. Most mass shooters expect to be killed by LEOs anyway. Or sometimes they kill themselves when they see no other way out.
I’m sure the death penalty deters some people (much like any law with significant fines/imprisonment would), but not the sorts willing to shoot up schools or other public places with a lot of people
germy
@zhena gogolia: Remember Joe Jackson? He had a bunch of hits in the ’80s (sounded somewhat like Elvis Costello)
He’s become an avid “smokers’ rights” advocate. He claims secondhand smoke is not a health risk, just a scare tactic invented by those who want to interfere with smokers’ freedoms.
trollhattan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
“We’ll show you! We’ll execute your ass. There, mass murder problem solved!”
Our county DA believes the death penalty is a crime-prevention measure. I’m not fond of our DA, yet she keeps getting elected. A certain cohort of Dems don’t have a problem with capital punishment.
patrick II
So I watched Trump regurgitate the NRA’s standard mass murder talking point yesterday — mass murders are caused by the mentally ill — during his daily White House lawn daily raving. So, if it is true that the United States has more mass murders by orders of magnitude than any other industrial nation and, if the causal link to mass murders is mental illness, then,Trump is asserting that the U.S. has, by orders of magnitude, more mentally ill people than any industrial country in the world. Not a kind thing to say about your countrymen. Maybe he’s just talking about his followers.
Another Scott
@germy: J took an Aeroflot flight from IAD to Dublin a few years ago. The “no smoking section” was literally her seat.
:-/
Cheers,
Scott.
scott (the other one)
@zhena gogolia:
It was even more recent than that: it was September 1985.
JaySinWA
@MattF:
Bambi shouldn’t dress provocatively if she doesn’t want to be shot.
carole
@germy: More realistically, the smoker probably had no reason to assume that people sitting in the smoking section would be offended by a cigarette. Still gross, but that’s MO for ya.
The Dangerman
Not sure I agree. People can admit they are wrong even on the biggest issues…
…but what the gun nutters dream about is getting to be the “good guy with a gun” that stops the “bad guy with a gun”. It’s extra dreamy if the person getting stopped/popped is a POC. Course, it’s a dream and it never happens.
trollhattan
A much more pleasant topic–there’s a Linda Ronstadt documentary on the way.
Kay
@trollhattan:
I think they like it because it’s a mechanism to get them to plead to a serious crime. If they can threaten them with imposition of the death penalty they are more likely to plead to get a lesser (but still incredibly lengthy) sentence.
Yet another reason it’s awful. If true. I suppose one could look at it- do people in death penalty states plead more often to more serious crimes than people in no death penalty states?
zhena gogolia
@germy:
I remember changing the channel when he came on MTV. He was repulsive back then!
zhena gogolia
@scott (the other one):
Too lazy to go back and check.
Although I love Zappa, I was also struck by the misogyny in his testimony. His voice was dripping with scorn whenever he used a phrase like “Washington wives.”
germy
@zhena gogolia: He’s even worse now. He’s still recording and releasing music, but I’m not sure how much of an audience he’s retained.
Ruckus
@J R in WV:
Was living/working in OH when CA no smoking law went into effect. Traveled to CA for work and walked into a coffee shop for breakfast and asked for a non smoking area. Hostess told me, snottily, there’s no smoking in the restaurant. I got the impression that she was affected personally. I replied, sound good I’ll be fine anywhere. Back in OH, Columbus city council passed a law, no smoking in restaurants. The restaurants pissed and moaned that they would massively lose business. First day no smoking, every place in town was full up. Even in a place with a much higher % of smokers than CA, there were far more non smokers.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@germy:
Ah man, that sucks to hear about Joe Jackson. I’ve always thought his music was pretty good. He gets played a lot on a local independent radio station I listen to. But fuck him for that “smoker’s rights” bullshit.
I remember a few years back an e-cigarette ad talked about “taking our rights back” or something to that effect. Ugh
MattF
@patrick II: Um, given that psychological projection is a basic coping mechanism for Trump and his followers, it’s fair to start with the assumption that he’s talking about himself.
Ruckus
@germy:
I don’t wonder.
tokyokie
@germy:
The theory for that was that because the airflow was front to back, putting the smokers in the back would make everybody happy. But as you say, it didn’t work. And the worst experience I ever had was in the mid-1970s on a trans-Atlantic flight in the last row of the nonsmoking section. A row of seats had been removed to accommodate a bulkhead demarcating the division between the smoking and nonsmoking sections, but that left a bit of an open area, so that’s where the smokers would gather and chit-chat, blowing smoke in my face the entire flight. Ugh.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
The guns and republicans literally are the problem.
FIXIT for you.
Ruckus
@patrick II:
drumpy knows mental illness. His prevents him from talking about his personal issues, but he knows.
trollhattan
@Ruckus:
You just described the response to each smoking restriction passed locally (generally county by county before the state finally got into the act.
“We’ll lose bidnez!”
Law goes into effect. Even the bars manage to keep slinging booze, uninterrupted.
Glad my kid has never experienced smoking in public spaces, on planes, etc. But a BIG group of her friend vape “because it’s safe.” Oy.
trollhattan
@tokyokie:
Like the air quality on planes was great to begin with. And boarding, you were greeted by the dead ashtray smell combined with the crap they’d spray between flights to try and cover it up. Yum.
trnc
In case you missed it:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/texas-gop-lawmaker-never-pass-gun-control-laws
As commenter lastroth said:
One more question for Schaeffer – has he not prayed after the numerous other gun crimes this year, or is Jesus just not listening to him?
Redshift
@The Dangerman:
Our, like with support for the Iraq War or W Bush, they can just pretend they never held that view. I doubt any but the most prominent gun nuts would get any argument with that; we’d all prefer not arguing about it to holding them responsible.
Redshift
@germy:
If you visit the Apollo 11 mission control, every console except the flight surgeon has a built-in ashtray. I lived through that era, and I still find that striking.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@trollhattan:
I used to be far more morally opposed to the death penalty until the Portland stabbings. A piece of shit was screaming at two Muslim women on a train. When two good samaritans tried to intervene, the POS killed them and one of the women IIRC. He fled and was caught shortly afterwards by police. He was jubilant when he was caught. He made an appearance in court a few weeks later and was completely unrepentant. That guy, I hope gets the DP. He was caught red-handed and he murdered innocent people.
I’m generally against the DP for practical reasons such as wrongful arrest, systematic/institutional racism, execution of innocent people, and honest mistakes by the justice system.
I’m also mostly against the DP for moral reasons too. Murder is the worst crime and we as a society disapprove of it so much we’ll…murder the perp as punishment. It’s humungously hypocritical and reeks of revenge.
However, I can’t help but make an exception for the Portland asshole. Maybe it’s because it was a racially and politically motivated crime. Maybe because there’s little doubt as to the perp’s guilt. Maybe it’s because I can see myself in the slain good samaritans. And maybe it’s the fact that the killer was proud of what he did.
trnc
Have people here heard the most contrived joke in the world about the guy trapped on a roof after a flood who turns down all offers of help from people, saying “God will save me?” He eventually gets swept away and drowns, and then he asks God when he gets to Heaven, “How could you let that happen?” God says, “I sent you a boat and a helicopter, etc, etc.”
I’ve retooled the joke so that God tells the republican shooting victim “I kept sending you democrats with gun control proposals.”
Maybe I can get invited to the WH Correspondents Dinner.
frosty
@germy:
I always liked Blue Collar Comedian Ron White’s take on it (paraphrased):
“My brother-on-law’s a hunter. Goes out to the woods to hunt deer.
I’ve done that myself. Yep, hunting the wily deer. I got one just last week. With the horn blarin’ and the lights flashing!”
frosty
@Bill Arnold:
Naahh. He heard “Georgia and [some other state]” and the only thing he could remember was that Alabama was next to Georgia. No more complicated than that.
frosty
@JaySinWA:
You just won my share of the internet today. Nice one!
Redshift
Moms Demand should also get a lot of credit for making gun control a big electoral issue. They were a huge organizing presence in the ’17 blue wave for the Virginia legislative elections, and I get the sense they’re strong in a lot of places.
zhena gogolia
this is a really important thread by Asha Rangappa about gun laws
https://twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1168225063574880257
J R in WV
@MattF:
I gave up deer hunting after someone who had too much brown, uh, “coffee” opened up on over head turkeys with a deer rifle one morning. I stayed in camp after that, which was pretty enjoyable.
We ate well, no turkey but plenty of deer, potatoes and beans, etc. And “coffee” — which was pretty harmless when unarmed in camp. And no one shot at me, in camp. Did learn that it’s pretty hard to take a flying turkey with even a large magazine rifle.
trnc
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: I’m mostly against the death penalty for some of the same reasons – too many wrongful convictions, and the state should be in the safety business, not the revenge business. But I don’t have a moral problem with rare applications where the evidence is absolutely incontrovertible and the perp is a total fiend, although defining that could be problematic. But considering how expensive it is to house someone on death row, I’d say the money could be better used by paying guards better and improving prison safety.
FelonyGovt
@germy: I once had to travel on business with 2 clients, both of whom were smokers, so I had to sit in the smoking section on the plane with them. LA to Kansas City, I think. I nearly choked.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Attorneys for Alleged MAX Stabber Jeremy Christian Ask to Move His Murder Trial Out of Portland
I have no idea why the media uses “alleged” when it’s obvious he did it. He did it in front of dozens of witnesses. Absolutely no remorse for what he did
J R in WV
@germy:
Hmmm! Ya think? No kidding!
And it worked, we were offended, lunch was smoked out, but we also learned, don’t go to Missouri. So there’s that, too.
No offense to those who live there! But we’ll have to get together somewhere where people don’t fill the air with toxic fumes where people try to eat.
And these people using “vape” devices? They suck on those gadgets, and then they emit a cloud that could have come from a power plant cooler tower!! How can they believe that’s less harmful than a little Camel smoke?
Use your eyes AND your brain, folks. If you want to smoke less, use nicotine patches and don’t smoke! Don’t use a high tech gadget that allows you to spew the biggest cloud of fumes since that volcano in Iceland erupted under the glacier…
Quinerly
@trnc: ?
trnc
@zhena gogolia: That’s a great rundown of the policy conflicts between state and fed and clarifies why “enforce existing laws” is a glib non-response to the problem. One of the things that chaps my ass is the fetish media outlets have about shooters buying their guns legally as if it’s a reason NOT to talk about additional legislation.
CliosFanBoy
@germy: he’s also a big 9/11 “Truther”.
trollhattan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Admit I’m telling you what you already know but a system that executes the Portland murderer will also execute the innocent. One of these cannot exist without the other.
I believe in justice and fight an internal struggle against the desire for revenge. Executions are revenge and I won’t be a part of that. The US aligns ourselves with China and Saudia Arabia when we kill people in the name of the state.
Quinerly
@J R in WV: our bars and restaurants are now non smoking. At least in city of St. Louis and St. Louis County. Some places had smoking grandfathered in but I think all of that has now expired. I do believe the casinos still allow smoking.
Redshift
@FelonyGovt: I probably never would have tried smoking because I’m allergic to cigarette smoke, but it was already sealed on a family trip back when I was a teenager.
We were on a flight where we were supposed to be in the nonsmoking section, but we weren’t. So they moved the signs stuck to the headrests back one row, voila! Then our row was our family and one smoker. Watching him twitch through the several hour flight was the clearest demonstration anyone could ask for of how addictive smoking is.
trollhattan
@Quinerly:
Cal-OSHA (I know, I know) would note that it’s not a safe workplace to expose the staff to tobacco smoke. I do wonder how vape lounges and cigar lounges get around this–massive ventilation systems?
Raven
@FelonyGovt: I flew from LA to Chicago with an LB in each of the big pockets on my motorcycle jacket and smoker a bomber in the head!
Suzanne
I have noticed (as I’m sure have many of y’all) that many of the ammosexual class are ungoodlooking, out-of-shape dudes who cannot exert themselves physically at all. Could not outrun a damn toddler. Guns allow these doods to think of themselves as athletes and physically fit. The power of fantasy.
Quinerly
@trollhattan: there are some cigar lounges around… Private clubs. I did a quick search since I had forgotten a lot of the ins and outs here. Originally, some bars/clubs that didn’t serve food or allow kids in still allowed smoking for a few years after the city ban went in operation. Looks like Missouri’s bans are by counties/municipalities. With that said, smoking probably still allowed in rural areas.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@trollhattan:
Yeah, I get that. The criminal justice system was made by humans and is run by them. Leaving aside either deliberate malice or systematic biases, mistakes happen and innocent people do get punished. At least if they go to prison, they’ll still be alive and can be freed.
And the DP is absolutely state revenge.
japa21
I smoked for 50+ years until I quit 6 months ago. It was interesting that whenever I was in a situation where smoking was not allowed, it never really bothered me, but as soon as I was no longer in that situation I had to light up ASAP. IOW, when a lot of places became non-smoking areas it never really bothered me. I know some people who get really ticked off and very tense when they couldn’t smoke, however.
joel hanes
@Raven:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzrkDGxZexA
RAVEN
@joel hanes: Don’t check my bags if you please. . .
And then there is the ever popular Flyin High by Country Joe \
He said we can’t leave him out in the rain
He just might freeze and die
So, why not put him on a plane
And send him home in the sky
So, they took me to the LA airport
Laid twenty dollars in my hand
Well, I paid my fair, I’m a millionaire
Flyin’ back home again
And I went flying high
All the way
James E Powell
@germy:
It always strikes me as odd that it was ever okay to smoke on airplanes. When I first started college in 1977, students could smoke in class if the professor allowed it. I had quite a few chain-smoking professors. As late as the early 90s, I had judges who would smoke during bench trials.
Mandalay
I don’t like the call that was made, so so I’m going to pretend to point a gun at the line judge and the umpire…
To nobody’s surprise, he even had the nerve to play the victim: “Just tell me what I did…”.
What an asshole.
raven
@japa21: I quit smoking in Vietnam 50 years ago, there was only so much my lungs could take!
Brachiator
Excellent post. It is fascinating to see that Scott is running away from his own gun control accomplishments. This underscores Trump’s power with the GOP, along with the still considerable influence of the NRA.
Trump and the right wing are trying to sell the idea that we must never, ever talk about restricting access to guns, but instead talk about mental Illness (at least when it comes to white male shooters).
But Betty also points out the powerful counter to this stupidity.
Voter drives and political action make a key difference.
Millennials (people born between 1981 and 1996) and many from Generation z may make up one of the largest segments of voters in the upcoming presidential election. And this group, which grew up in the shadow of too many mass shootings, don’t fall for the same old political rhetoric.
ETA. I find it interesting that practically no one, conservative or liberal, seems to talk much about gun control efforts in New Zealand. Maybe it’s too soon to evaluate the impact of changes.
Also, Switzerland has a tradition of gun rights and gun ownership even stronger and older than in the US. I think they even still have shooting contests for adolescents. And yet even the Swiss recently passed new, tougher gun control measures. But again, this is not mentioned in connection with efforts here.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@raven:
I have to ask, did you ever watch Magnum, PI? If you did, what did you think of the show’s handling of Vietnam veterans, since that was a big part of the show?
Aleta
Another similarity to cigarettes is the fantasy that’s been sold with the product. The fantasy is who you are if you own guns.
The consumerism part of selling the gun fantasy: once we’ve bought the cool thing we’re encouraged to display it. Or to display our knowledge about calibers, magazines, accessories, weapon specs as though it’s a competition we might win.
A gun fantasy sold with the product is the wild west. There’s the good guy version of the fantasy (I will save “the lil’ lady”– I will protect orderly society) and the bad guy version. (Like Billy the Kid, the outlaw/hero said to have ‘killed 8 men including two guards before he was shot and killed.’ Who ‘unintentionally fell into outlawry, a lifestyle he couldn’t get out of.’) We’re told that people would cheer them on. People still remember their names.
Consumerism feeds desire for a gun; so then what do you do with it. Once you get the money to buy it you want to use it. You can shoot targets in your yard or rats or set up a range on your land.
You can go to a shooting range. But there are rules — you can only shoot in one direction, you point where they tell you, you must sign in and out. Some people are fine with that, but not the lone ranger, not the outlaw with the heart of gold who gives food to the common man and is polite to the imaginary “ladies” who admire and depend on him in his fantasy.
And don’t get me started on American guys I’ve known in Asia who’ve been sold the fantasy of the itinerant martial arts expert. Like gun owners, they imagine themselves to be peaceful souls, but also tell me that they are just itching for a chance to beat up a bad guy.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Brachiator:
Do you think there is a place for talking about mental illness when it comes to mass shootings? I am afraid that all this talk about “mental illness” is demonizing actual mentally ill people by making it seem that they are all potentially dangerous
japa21
@raven: Would that I had quit 50 years ago. Would have saved me a lot of money. Since the services wouldn’t touch me with a 10 pole, I wasn’t in Nam. Lost a couple good friends that were.
trollhattan
On Saturday was pondering why this guy was driving around with gun and tons of ammo. It seems possible the traffic stop occurred when he was already planning to go kill people.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
I don’t think that capital punishment is revenge. And I think it is reductive to suggest that we align ourselves with China and Saudi Arabia when we kill people in the name of the state.
And unless you live in a community where your police do not carry weapons, you have absolutely authorized the possible use of deadly force.
But I can relate to this.
I think that some crimes are so heinous and their impact on survivors so severe that I want to see the perpetrators executed.
But imprisonment and the application of death sentences are sometimes clearly cruel and unfair. And it is just a plain goddam fact that too many innocent people have been convicted.
I also found especially detestable the recent view of one capital punishment supporter. He said that he assumed that a person found to be innocent probably committed some other undiscovered crime, so it would still be okay to execute them.
Ultimately, I agree with the late Supreme Court justice Harry Blackmun, and his repudiation of capital punishment.
Suzanne
@Aleta:
Yes. This is why I never believe the “guns are just tools!” argument. No one talks about their pizza wheels or their ratchet sets the way ammosexuals talk about their firearms.
Not to mention…. I am constantly horrified by the people I meet who blather on and on about guns being necessary for defense of the home, but they refuse to lock their doors. They are practically salivating at the idea of someone stealing their TV so they can kill someone.
Brachiator
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
Oh, absolutely. But the right wing aren’t serious and they have no concern that mentally ill people might be demonized. They just want to protect gun owners.
So, they are trying to assert this insane hierarchy.
Muslim shooters — dangerous terrorists
Blacks and Hispanic shooters — dangerous thugs
White male shooters — mentally ill
laura
@trollhattan: AND, our county’s sheriff is a human skidmark….he failed to add. Trumpiest, racist, ICE enabler, and yet, ran unopposed. Scott Jones, ladies and gentlemen:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/scott-jones-mini-trump-sheriff-and-accused-sexual-harasser-behind-netflix-series-jailbirds
Raven
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: Nope, never watched it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: The people who think of them as tools generally talk about them same way they would talk about their chainsaw. And about as often.
Ruckus
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
No death penalty.
Life without possibility of parole. Make them sit in that little cell for the rest of their lives. Let them stew about how unfair it is for them to be there. Let them do nothing but sit, shit, sleep and eat cheese sandwiches every fucking day for lunch. And the same meal for dinner every night. Let it sink in that what they have done is wrong. Or not. But give them the time to do nothing but think about it. They took someone else’s life. Make them live the rest of theirs, don’t give them the easy way out.
One more thing. Don’t be like them. Be better. Don’t kill them, eye for an eye is bullshit. Don’t perpetuate the death cycle.
Don’t be like them.
Be better.
Tehanu
We used to go to clubs a lot in the 1970s and then didn’t have time for many years (raising a family, working). Finally went to a club again about 10 years ago and although I felt perfectly comfortable, something was odd … and it took me about 20 minutes to realize that the “oddity” was that I could see everything because there were no clouds of cigarette smoke!
Sebastian
@Ruckus:
Eye for an eye was literally the introduction of punishment which fits the crime. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth, not I kill you because you took my cow.
At some point some morons turned it into a description of revenge and vigilante justice.
It’s not.
Amir Khalid
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
I myself am opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances. Without exception.
Amir Khalid
@JaySinWA:
For the benefit of those who have not read the book or seen the Disney cartoon, Bambi is a he.
Brachiator
@Sebastian:
Yes! Yes! An eye for an eye used poetic language to specify that justice had to be proportionate. You had cultures then and now which would initiate an eternal family blood feud to settle disputes. The rich could demand greater penalties if a poor person harmed them. “An eye for an eye” was a huge advance in administering justice.
Richard Guhl
@Brachiator:
And the rabbis in the Midrash finally interpreted this to be a fine. An eye for an eye set limits on vengeance.